India Bans Bulk Texts in Attempt to Stanch Fear, Migrant Exodus

By Bibhudatta Pradhan -
Aug 17, 2012

India banned bulk mobile-phone
texting to check the spread of rumors of violence against
migrants from northeastern states following ethnic clashes in
Assam last month that killed 77 and displaced more than 400,000.

The government banned bulk phone messaging for 15 days,
Home Secretary R.K. Singh told reporters in New Delhi yesterday.
Ninong Ering, a ruling Congress party lawmaker from the state of
Arunachal Pradesh, said in parliament yesterday that about
20,000 people had fled cities including Mumbai, Bangalore and
Pune, and demanded action against those spreading rumors.

“We will do our utmost to ensure that our friends, our
children and our citizens from the northeast feel secure in any
part and every part of our country,” Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh said yesterday in parliament. “We must curb all the
elements that are out to create trouble.”

Fighting broke out in July in the northeastern state of
Assam’s Kokrajhar district between indigenous Bodo tribespeople
and Muslims who have settled in the region from what is now
Bangladesh over several decades. Violence erupts every few years
between the communities, driven by competition for agricultural
land.

Authorities in the state deployed the army, imposed a
curfew as the violence in Kokrajhar spread to neighboring
districts. On Aug. 11, two people died and dozens were injured
when a rally in Mumbai organized by groups protesting killings
of Muslims in Assam turned violent.

Television channels including CNN-IBN showed images of
migrant workers and students from the northeast thronging
railway stations in Pune and the southern city of Chennai,
cramming trains to head back home.

Separately, an explosion in Pune yesterday injured a child,
CNN-IBN reported. Four low-intensity explosions struck the city
on Aug. 1, injuring one person.